Kosovo (Hansard, 6 February 2002)

§ Mrs. Mahon
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress has been made in identifying the bodies found in Dragodan and Suva Reka in Kosovo. [32169]

§ Mr. MacShane
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has exhumed 210 bodies from individual graves at the cemetery in Dragodan. According to the Missing Persons Unit of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), 52 of the 210 bodies have been identified to date.
ICTY completed its exhumations in Suva Reka in October 2000. The 73 bodies identified to date have been Kosovo Albanians.
In accordance with last November's UNMIK-FRY Common Document, UNMIK will launch a comprehensive programme of exhumation and identification in Kosovo this year. This will include Suva Reka where 300 unidentified bodies, exhumed by ICTY from graves across Kosovo, were re-interred by UNMIK.

§ Mrs. Mahon
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress has UNMIK made in tracing the missing Serbs in Kosovo. [32168]

§ Mr. MacShane
Action to trace missing Serbs from Kosovo is being taken forward by both the UNMIK-FRY Contact Group on Missing Persons and the new High Ranking Working Group, established following signature of the UNMIK-FRY Common Document in November 2001.
In the Common Document, UNMIK agreed to launch a programme of exhumation and identification in Kosovo this year. As a first step in this process, three joint protocols covering cross-border repatriation of identified remains, joint verification teams and an exchange of forensic information were signed by UNMIK and the Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade on 24 January.
UNMIK is also in the process of transferring 800 bone samples to the International Commission on Missing Persons' (ICMP) state of the art DNA testing facilities in Sarajevo. The UK is supporting the work of the ICMP with a donation of £250,000.